UK

The UK could be left without any flights to and from Europe after Brexit, Ryanair has warned. The low-cost airline said aviation should be treated as a matter of urgency in Brexit negotiations, as summer schedules for 2019 must be finalised by March next year.
The Dublin-headquartered company, which operates more than 1,800 flights to over 200 destinations in 33 countries daily, urged the UK Government to “put aviation at the forefront of its negotiations with the EU and provide a coherent post-Brexit plan,” said Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs in a statement.

The UK could be a “serious competitor” to Switzerland as a low-tax business location in a post-Brexit world, Mr Mauer, the Swiss finance minister said: “That is perhaps the chance – that we have a partner in the same position, which on important issues is close to us.”

On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May will kick off two years of formal negotiations with 27 EU governments. She still wants tariff-free, friction-less trade with Europe but prioritizes the right to impose immigration limits above all else.

Mr Maurer said: “The UK has lots of advantages and if they are used cleverly to decouple from the EU, as well as the new freedom in a good bilateral relationship, then the UK could develop very positively, I’m convinced of that.” If no favourable deal is struck, the tax rate could be dropped even lower to attract business, chancellor Philip Hammond has recently said.

The cost of making a car in the UK could increase by £2,370 ($2,930) in the event of a hard Brexit, according to research published by PA Consulting Group. The tariffs would apply to both imported and exported cars with the report stating carmakers would be likely to pass any price increases to buyers.

The report explained that the increased cost of manufacturing could be the case if the UK falls back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules post Brexit. It warned that the 10% WTO tariffs on exporting and importing with the European Union (EU), could force some manufacturers in the UK to relocate outside the country.

HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Barclays and Coutts are among 17 banks based in the UK, or with branches here, believed to have processed almost $740 million on behalf of Russian money launderers with ties to gangsters and intelligence services, according a major investigation carried out by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Novaya Gazeta, and reported by the Guardian.

The figure was gathered by documents covering the years 2010-2014 showing at least $80 billion was moved out of Russia by an organisation called the Global Laundromat. Investigators are still trying to identify who is behind the nickname, but the task is difficult as the owners of offshore entities that moved money through the banks often kept their identities secret, the report noted, adding the documents include details of about 70,000 banking transactions, including 1,920 that went through UK banks and 373 via US banks.

British prime minister Theresa May will trigger article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the formal notification of the United Kingdom’s intention to leave the European Union, on March 29th, a spokesman for the British leader said on Monday.
More than 40 years after the UK joined the EU and nine months since it voted to quit it, Britain’s envoy to the bloc, Tim Barrow, informed EU President Donald Tusk on Monday of her plan to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the mechanism for quitting that has never been used.

The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest since the summer of 1975, with a record number of people in work: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate fell to 4.7% .

Other figures published on Wednesday showed that unemployment fell by 31,000 in the three months to January, to 1.58 million, the lowest for a decade, giving a jobless rate of 4.7%, the lowest since the summer of 1975.

It is a decade since the start of the financial crisis. What started in the US housing market later engulfed the global economy and is having an enduring legacy on the UK – perhaps most notably on savers.

Some 28% of EU citizens who have applied for permanent residency in the U.K. since Brexit had their applications rejected or declared invalid, the Guardian reported Monday.

In the last half of 2016, more than 12,800 EU citizens had their permanent residency requests rejected and a further 5,500 were declared invalid, analysis by the Liberal Democrats found. However, the Home Office said “applications can be rejected for a whole range of administrative reasons including where an application form has not being signed or failure to pay a fee.”